UNF's new Strategic Plan sets an ambitious target of the school's population growing from 16,000 students to 25,000 by 2028, while becoming one of the nation's top public universities.
https://www.firstcoastnews.com/article/news/local/unf-strategic-plan-calls-for-25000-total-students-2028/77-933234db-a7af-4e2f-ad18-600aef0fc0fd
Interesting. Nationwide, demand for 4 year colleges has actually been declining. The link in the article shows the same trend for both UNF and Florida state universities in total which is a bit more surprising considering Florida's rapid population growth.
So, while I am supportive of growing UNF, I am wondering where they will find these students in this environment. Some colleges might turn to foreign students, but good luck with that given DeSantis's actions of late. They also could lower admissions standards but that isn't going to take them to a Top 100 university that they say they aspire to be.
If they are including graduate students in the growth, I wonder if they are motivated by a perceived "threat" from UF coming to town.
I also question that $300 million could fund a 50+% expansion of the student body.
Gee. And I remember when there were only 4 buildings, plus the Boathouse!
I have huge waitlists in all my classes.
Quote from: jcjohnpaint on August 25, 2023, 05:17:48 PM
I have huge waitlists in all my classes.
LOL. Of course, that's different from huge waitlists for admission. Your waitlists may be a function of how great a teacher you are, your subject matter and/or a lack of enough faculty to meet the needs of existing students. The latter could be another obstacle to expansion. Wondering how many professors UNF can recruit given, again, DeSantis's attacks on educators.
We have has a handful of faculty walk away due to DeSantis. I'm sure many more will follow with the 'post-tenure review'. I might be one of them. Personally, I think rushing to get 9000 students will be disastrous.
Desantis will be gone before long. He's just a small blimp in Florida's timeline.
He'll be gone, but there's still the fallout of the educators pushed out of the system, the programs that are illegal to fund, the university presidents and trustees who have been installed. What will it take to undo what's happened to New College? Or Ben Sasse's planned changes at UF? Or if Randy Fine is put in charge of FAU? Not to mention everything in K-12. And there's no guarantee that the next governor won't be worse.
He doesn't really scare me as much as most. I at least know where he stands. I rather that, then deal with those who speak a good game, but fail to show up when really needed. I've been around a while now, lived through multiple governors, presidents, mayors, etc. Graduating high school prior to desegregation, my parent's generation have seen much worse.
Despite those that want to stop progress, progress has continued. Take it as a badge of honor that there are those who now feel so threatened with the progress, that they expose their true selves with tactics to try to preserve an old unequitable way of life.
With politics, they come and go and swing in multiple directions as time goes on. Yeah, he may screw up New College. But where there's a ying, there's a yang. Opportunity will be opened elsewhere. Demographics show that Florida is getting more purple every day, so what he's doing right now (that the beating he's taking nationally) is more likely to swing things in the opposite direction when he's time is up. Keep on pushing through to make the community a better place.
Quote from: thelakelander on August 25, 2023, 10:38:02 PM
He doesn't really scare me as much as most. I at least know where he stands. I rather that, then deal with those who speak a good game, but fail to show up when really needed. I've been around a while now, lived through multiple governors, presidents, mayors, etc. Graduating high school prior to desegregation, my parent's generation have seen much worse.
Despite those that want to stop progress, progress has continued. Take it as a badge of honor that there are those who now feel so threatened with the progress, that they expose their true selves with tactics to try to preserve an old unequitable way of life.
With politics, they come and go and swing in multiple directions as time goes on. Yeah, he may screw up New College. But where there's a ying, there's a yang. Opportunity will be opened elsewhere. Demographics show that Florida is getting more purple every day, so what he's doing right now (that the beating he's taking nationally) is more likely to swing things in the opposite direction when he's time is up. Keep on pushing through to make the community a better place.
I agree with just about everything minus the demographics part. Florida is moving further and further away from that swing state it once was. State data from the Division of Elections show that new residents are twice as likely to be Republicans than Democrats and even outgain NPA's. Black and Asian in-migration has slowed down considerably over the last 5 years while White and Latino in-migration has increased. The fastest growing parts of our state are Republican strongholds such as Southwest Florida and Polk County.
You're seeing leftward swings in a few places such as Jacksonville and Orlando where Duval, Clay, Orange, and Seminole counties have all shown consistent leftward trends as well as the college towns, Gainesville and Tallahassee. However these slow progressions are not enough to offset the harsh rightward swings of once competitive places such as Volusia, Flagler, Pasco, and St Lucie counties.
I think Florida can and will be competitive again but Republicans have a clear and increasing edge in the state and demographics no longer play into Democrats' favor as more Latinos outside of traditionally conservative Cubans have become open to Republican policies
I'm so glad they are finally doing this. I've spent most of my life wondering why they are keeping UNF so teeny tiny compared to UCF and USF. You can see how much more UCF and USF have benefited those respective metros for being bigger, more powerful universities. Meanwhile, they have had this weird mentality that UNF is a "boutique" university, when really it is a state school in the country's 3rd largest state by population, and the only somewhat large university that Jax has. They've been treating it like it is Cal Tech meets Middlebury, and hate to break it to the lofty elitist circle types that often apply these notions to everything they run and donate to, but it is a standard state school meant to be churning out skilled workers en masse for our growing metro area.
Quote from: jcjohnpaint on August 25, 2023, 06:38:48 PM
We have has a handful of faculty walk away due to DeSantis. I'm sure many more will follow with the 'post-tenure review'. I might be one of them. Personally, I think rushing to get 9000 students will be disastrous.
I have a friend who is a tenured professor there. This person has told me a lot about their experience on campus (especially post-COVID), and if a lot of lefties left due to Desantis, based on what this person has told me, GOOD. Some cray cray stuff happening and y'all forget, but not everyone is a commie woke gobbledy gook fart sniffer on this board. I jest, but only partially.
Quote from: thelakelander on August 25, 2023, 10:38:02 PM
He doesn't really scare me as much as most. I at least know where he stands. I rather that, then deal with those who speak a good game, but fail to show up when really needed. I've been around a while now, lived through multiple governors, presidents, mayors, etc. Graduating high school prior to desegregation, my parent's generation have seen much worse.
Despite those that want to stop progress, progress has continued. Take it as a badge of honor that there are those who now feel so threatened with the progress, that they expose their true selves with tactics to try to preserve an old unequitable way of life.
With politics, they come and go and swing in multiple directions as time goes on. Yeah, he may screw up New College. But where there's a ying, there's a yang. Opportunity will be opened elsewhere. Demographics show that Florida is getting more purple every day, so what he's doing right now (that the beating he's taking nationally) is more likely to swing things in the opposite direction when he's time is up. Keep on pushing through to make the community a better place.
I disagree that progress has continued, just the opposite actually. Wasting tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars on passing numerous unconstitutional laws, then fighting losing battles to preserve them, only makes a few lawyers rich. Deliberately leaving a congressional seat open for many months unnecessarily is a petty, vindictive act that only hurts people trying to get their VA or SS benefit issues resolved. Spending tax money and probably breaking a few laws in the process to execute a B.S. MAGA stunt that exploits the poorest of the poor is shameful. Single handily eliminating a minority US House member would make Lester Maddox or George Wallace proud. Implementing a white-washed fictional version of history would too.
DeSantis is essentially a dictator as not one member of the Legislature or state Judiciary will oppose him. I live in a state with a GOP Governor and legislature and yet they do not and not surrender all their power to him.
Even if DeSantis is replaced with a great Governor, you have lost eight years of progress you could have had, plus however long it takes to amend for all the harm he has done, which could be even longer.
Quote from: simms3 on August 28, 2023, 08:35:49 AM
I'm so glad they are finally doing this. I've spent most of my life wondering why they are keeping UNF so teeny tiny compared to UCF and USF. You can see how much more UCF and USF have benefited those respective metros for being bigger, more powerful universities. Meanwhile, they have had this weird mentality that UNF is a "boutique" university, when really it is a state school in the country's 3rd largest state by population, and the only somewhat large university that Jax has. They've been treating it like it is Cal Tech meets Middlebury, and hate to break it to the lofty elitist circle types that often apply these notions to everything they run and donate to, but it is a standard state school meant to be churning out skilled workers en masse for our growing metro area.
It's struck me as interesting that UNF seems to be upset at the notion of the city's excitement about the prospect of a UF downtown campus while at the same time not demonstrating especially much interest (until now) in becoming more like UF in a way where they could garner similar interest. Frankly I get the sense that UNF, and perhaps to some degree many of this city's academic institutions seem all too happy to sit in their forested cocoons and wonder why no one's paying attention to them. UF takes a greater (even if often insufficient) interest in physically being part of Gainesville than most of the schools here.
Quote from: vicupstate on August 28, 2023, 10:36:55 AM
Even if DeSantis is replaced with a great Governor, you have lost eight years of progress you could have had, plus however long it takes to amend for all the harm he has done, which could be even longer.
For my parent's generation, they grew up in a time where they could not live (if they wanted too) in a Riverside or San Marco or drive through GA or SC without a fear in mind. Whenever the DeSantis talk starts up, a conversation with that generation, really puts things in perspective.
Over the last few years, I've had the privilege to work with a lot of Gullah communities, including those in South Carolina. Regardless of what DeSantis is doing (or not doing), we're on the ground moving and improving things from the bottom up and in many ways, what we're accomplishing in this region can only be dreamed of by similar communities in Savannah, Charleston, etc.
On our end, we're continuing to make progress in ways that trickle down economics have not done for these communities, regardless of the political swings at the federal and state levels. Great or bad governor, there's important work to be done that Tallahassee isn't equipped to lead. That guy is term limited and will be gone. We have just as much ability to undo what he's done as he's had to do what he's done. Its from that perspective and lens, I push forward with. For those in the Florida Democratic party, that group should be using these eight years to find someone competent to run. No more Charlie Crist please.
Quote from: simms3 on August 28, 2023, 08:38:28 AM
Quote from: jcjohnpaint on August 25, 2023, 06:38:48 PM
We have has a handful of faculty walk away due to DeSantis. I'm sure many more will follow with the 'post-tenure review'. I might be one of them. Personally, I think rushing to get 9000 students will be disastrous.
I have a friend who is a tenured professor there. This person has told me a lot about their experience on campus (especially post-COVID), and if a lot of lefties left due to Desantis, based on what this person has told me, GOOD. Some cray cray stuff happening and y'all forget, but not everyone is a commie woke gobbledy gook fart sniffer on this board. I jest, but only partially.
I hope Simms you are mostly just playing those of us who are not where you are. That said, universities act as change agent in our society. Most great advances are either derived by universities or students they educated. Conservatives like you are more about the status quo than making great changes. Liberals or those leaning more that way than not are thus going to be the most likely people to go into education. They want to move the status quo forward, toward a "better" future than the past. This clearly runs counter to people like Trump, DeSantis and most of the GOP today who want to turn the hands of time back to some idealize past which many in our society don't associate with.
Regardless, if conservatives think they have a better mousetrap, rather than harassing and intimidating those who disagree with them, they should compete in the market of ideas (that should be a free enterprise mantra of conservatives). If they fail to prevail, maybe they are advocating for something the majority doesn't buy into. Forcefully cramming their agenda down peoples throats isn't going to win out in the long run. There are not many autocrats in history that are celebrated once they are out of power.
Quote from: jaxlongtimer on August 28, 2023, 10:59:05 PMRegardless, if conservatives think they have a better mousetrap, rather than harassing and intimidating those who disagree with them, they should compete in the market of ideas (that should be a free enterprise mantra of conservatives).
The hypocrisy (and irony?) here is severe (not about you personally but the fact that you think conservatives are the ones harassing the debate of ideas out of the public square, likely because you conflate the push to ban what are essentially gay porn books from school libraries with shutting down ideas and speech), I just don't even have a comment. But to address the rest of your reply, I'll quote Cicero on the impending fall of the Roman Republic, from
The Republic:
Quote
"On ancient customs and old-fashioned men, the state of Rome stands firm."
The compactness and truth of that line are such that the poet who uttered it must, I think, have been prompted by an oracle. For neither the men on their own (in a state which lacked such a moral tradition) nor the state on its own (without such men in charge) could have founded or long maintained so great and wide-ranging an empire.
Long before living memory, our ancestral way of life produced outstanding men, and those excellent men preserved the old way of life and the institutions of their forefathers.
Our generation, however, after inheriting our political organization like a magnificent picture now fading with age, not only neglected to restore its original colors, but did not even bother to ensure that it retained its basic form and, as it were, its faintest outlines.
What remains of those ancient customs on which the state of Rome stood firm? We see them so ruined by neglect that not only do they go unobserved, they are no longer known. And what shall I say of the men? It is the lack of such men that has led to the disappearance of those customs.
Of this great tragedy we are not only bound to give a description; we must somehow defend ourselves as if we were arraigned on a capital charge. For it is not by some accident—no, it is because of our own moral failings—that we are left with the name of the Republic, having long since lost its substance.
I worked at UNF for 14 years until going over to the city last week. It's a great university and something very special in Florida that still doesn't get the props it deserves. I can say that increasing enrollment is an ambitious goal, but it's by no means impossible. We have to turn away many students each year. Increasing enrollment will likely involve lowering the academic profile of incoming students, but that'll be temporary. The bigger issue -- and it's a really big issue, is making sure the infrastructure and staff can keep up with the growth. It means more dorms, more buildings and more hires of staff and faculty. Fortunately we have a great president right now and great staff, and if anyone can do it, it's them.
There are other challenges beyond what UNF or any other university can control. First is the metrics the state uses to allocate funding to the universities. The metrics have always been bad in general and unfair to UNF and the "smaller" schools in particular. The clearest example is that the metrics favor schools with lower per-student spending. Well, one thing UNF excels at is its smaller class sizes and attention from the professors. The metrics punish UNF for something we do really well, while rewarding schools that cram students into immense classes.
UNF can maintain smaller class sizes with more students, but that takes additional hires. As others have said above, the state government's policies on education and academic freedom hurts that. It's absolutely making it harder to hire and keep people. UNF has already had professors, and equally importantly staff members, leave because of this. That'll continue to be an issue as long as it keeps happening.
Looking farther down the road, the local community and leadership sees great value in UNF as well as JU, FSCJ, EWU and Flagler, so they'll be able to weather all these issues and growing pains. The important thing is not to lose focus on what really makes it stand out as it adapts for the future.
UNF is already an excellent school. I went to both UNF and UF and I say without reservation that I got a far better education at UNF. In my professional opinion, maintaining that excellence is a matter of continuing and expanding upon the things it does well while adapting for the needs of the region and the state in the future.